Where Else?

I had an “aha” experience last week. I think I finally get it. Having just spent Rosh Hashanah in Israel for the first time, I can better appreciate the Christmas experience most Americans enjoy. For me Christmas has always seemed a time of pretty lights, nice music, and commercial scenes of Clydesdale horses pulling sleighs filled with laughing people on a sparkling winter day along a rural picket-fence lined road. People greeting each other during this season with the warmth and niceness typically reserved exclusively for Disney World; with “Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas” completing each conversation. But I was never really a part of it. I never felt like I was in the club.

In Israel I am a charter member. Walking down the street a young man is hurrying someplace, as he passes he looks at me and smiles saying “shanah tovah” wishing me a “good year” as he races on. In the shopping mall the security guard at the supermarket, typically a pretty surly sort of guy, greets each incoming and outgoing customer with a steady stream; “shanah tovah,” and “chag sameach (happy holiday).” At the Druze village in the north we stop for lunch at the hummus restaurant, “shanah tovah u’metukah” (a good and sweet year) says the owner and his wife as our meal is delivered. Every conversation, every advertisement, every interaction is laced with the sentiment of the possibility and opportunity that new years bring.

My dad turns 80 in a couple of weeks. He likes to tell a story about me as a kid growing up in suburban Chicago. The way he tells it, he and I were taking a walk around our neighborhood on an unusually warm December day when I was 4 or 5. As we walked past houses decked out in Christmas splendor, I am said to have remarked; “we’re Hanukah people, aren’t we daddy?” In Israel, Hanukkah people are everywhere, and during the High Holiday season there is a sense of connectedness that I have never felt before.

For the past 15 years at Agudath Israel in Caldwell, NJ, the High Holidays found us in the choir, on the bimah, in the pews, walking through the neighborhoods on breaks, sharing dinners and break-fasts with friends. We’re not only members of a shul, we are part of a community. We know most people and most people know us and it feels comfortable and nice and like home.

So when people asked me “aren’t you excited to be spending the Holidays in Israel this year” my reply was simple, “I am thrilled about the prospect of spending a year in Israel, but I think I will miss being at home at Agudath for the Holidays.” So after Rosh Hashanah I can say I was right and I was wrong.

I was right because it is true, I do miss being at Agudath. I miss knowing everyone, and sharing the experience with people I have known for a long time. I miss my Rabbi’s sermons, my Cantor’s melodies, the familiarity of our space, and my seat in the choir.

But I was wrong, I am part of a community. Four Rosh Hashanah meals, eight invitations to people’s homes for our family. Attending services in an intimate setting where for the first time in my life, I understood the power of the shofar. I had always experienced the shofar from afar, and from a sort of anachronistic perspective. The ancient Jews blew the shofar from mountain to mountain to alert those in the neighboring towns of the coming holiday. I know it sounds a little hokey, but this year, the shofar sounds felt like they were aimed at me, calling me personally to heed the messages of renewal and selflessness that are thematic of the High Holidays.

As we prepare for Kol Nidre tonight I am filled with awe of the opportunity and blessing our family has been given to experience living in Israel. As we meet people who are here from America, the UK, South Africa, most of whom came on a six-month or one-year adventure five to fifteen years ago, I ask them all the same question; “why did you decide to come here?” The answers are all so similar and all so powerful:

“We have had a Jewish homeland for only the past 62 years after more than 2000 years without one. Given those odds where else would I be.”

I am grateful to be here in Israel this year, experiencing the adventure and possibility that is the Jewish homeland. I wish everyone who reads this a Shanah Tovah U’Metukah (May We Each Have a Good and Sweet New Year), and G’mar Chatimah Tovah (May We Each be Inscribed for Blessing in the Book of Life).